In The Garden by Fr. Mark Kirby

Are you familiar with Fr. Mark Kirby's Vultus Christi blog?  His prolific writings are always achingly beautiful and his prayers for priests are especially touching.  I have always felt a strong connection to Jesus' Agony in the Garden, and after reading Fr. Kirby's reflection about how the Blessed Mother suffered during Christ's agony there, that connection feels even stronger, for I too, am a mother who knows of the sorrows of her sons born of her flesh as well as her spiritual priest sons, yet must stand by helplessly, unable to offer physical relief.  I pray that God sends the comfort of angels at the moments when they are most in need.  What follows below is Fr. Kirby's reflection, In the Garden.  In these final moments as we await Easter joy, won't you reflect and pray upon this scene with me?  Please visit and bookmark his blog for more inspiration.



In the garden,
His Face was unseen,
for the eyes of His friends had grown heavy with sleep,
and there was none to meet the gaze of the Sorrowing Son
other than the Sorrowing Father
and the Consoling Angel whom He had sent
to wipe His brow,
to caress His head
and, for a moment, to hold His hand.

This the Sorrowing Mother would have done
had she been there,
but even that was denied her.
The Mother was replaced by an Angel!
The consolation that only she could have given
was given by another,
and yet He knew the difference:
though sweet, it was an angel’s, not a mother’s.

Weeping like Eve outside the garden,
she consented to the bitter Chalice:
“Be it done unto me as to your Word!”
Chosen for this, she elected to remain
cloistered in the Father’s Will,
hidden and veiled in grief,
to drink there of the Chalice of her Son, the Priest,
and savour it, bitter against the palate of her soul,
for nought can taste a child’s suffering
like a mother’s palate.

Then the Angel too was gone
and the Father hid behind the veil of blood and of tears,
leaving the Son alone with His sorrow
and with His fear,
to proceed with the Sacrifice:
the priest on the way to the altar
with the chalice already in his hands.
~Fr. Mark Kirby